Family Finances of the Young Professor

IN the language of the full professors of our university, I am still ‘ one of the younger men.’ This means that to a mathematical nicety they can calculate my remaining years of apprenticeship. I am classed accordingly by some as deserving a mathematical nicety of indifference. About all that, however, I am cheerful, for the caste distinctions of faculty groups are not troublesome if one has any sense of humor. The present story deals only with the income of these university teachers, and particularly of those still under thirtyfive years of age. Obviously, I am among that number.

Like our older professors, I myself have tried some mathematical niceties. These have to do, not with the social rating of others, but with my income and expenditure during four years of university living. Possibly I am more methodical than most of my kind; at any rate, all the amounts are to be found entered in a red-covered notebook. These I shall now display as concrete proof of certain peculiar circumstances in the economic situation of the younger men in our college and university faculties.

Particularly those rated as instructors are concerned with the situation about to be described. In their case, university living has always meant continual public appearance in the classroom and attendance at receptions and teas as their social-political meetingground, while they and their wives live on salaries now paid good clerks or wartime stenographers. They have lived in the Land of Make-Believe so long that they are adepts in all the devices attributed to frontier preachers. War conditions, however, have destroyed the popular delusion by making such pretenses to well-being impossible for even the cleverest. Now, therefore, our American writers and publicists are discussing what is to be done, laboriously, it seems to us, surely with too much acidity in their defenses of both employers and employed. An accurate set of accounts covering the four hard years of faculty service will give better ground for sane judgment than the vague vaporings now current regarding professorial poverty.

But these are general statements, not facts. To begin, then, with the first incident in my accounting story, I must go back to the days of my study for a doctor’s degree. In plain English, this means three years of incessant grind, a finished book, and three hours of oral examination under the eyes of twelve professors in various states of friendliness. That labor ended, you have passed the first barrier to university advancement. It is perfectly understood in American educational centres that no man becomes a professor of any grade until he has won a doctorate of philosophy. That is nowadays a first principle. Quite proper, to be sure, that it should be so, for nothing else protects higher education from clever charlatans full of good words and slight knowledge — unless it be uncommonly acute departmental heads. I willingly paid the price of future safety in my profession by completing this necessary task. Having finished it at the age of thirty, I found that I had spent $3500 in cash on my graduate training, and six years of my life — three of the six in saving funds to meet part of the cost.

Thus far, you may say, my experience was very much that of any young lawyer or doctor who must earn his way through professional school. True, except in one respect. Slight mischances at the finish may upset all calculations of the scholar, rarely so of a doctor or lawyer. For example, some other scholar, working like yourself in secret in order to protect his investigation, may publish his results first and render your work valueless. On account of such disabilities only a venturesome scholar marries until he has the degree. His future during those years of research study is far too uncertain for him to bear the added responsibility of a wife and family.

Having my doctor’s degree, at the age of thirty I became an instructor. With the courage born of eight years’ waiting, we two were married that same month, four years ago, when I began receiving the annual salary of fourteen hundred dollars. Consideration for my teaching experience saved me a year at the lowest grade, two hundred dollars further down the scale. That fourteen hundred dollars was to be my first income after freeing myself from debt for my education, and I vowed to keep clear.

From this point let us deal in plain figures. Nothing else can make the situation so clear to others, for we all estimate another’s lot by comparing it with our own. Since we lived of necessity in a good community, our rent was forty dollars a month, a total of four hundred and eighty dollars a year. This was over a third of our income. Bad business, we both knew; so we put down this necessity as our only ‘extravagance ’ and set out to economize everywhere else. For the time being we ignored all budget systems as utterly inadequate to meet such a situation; nine hundred and twenty dollars could never be parceled out to cover new books, home furnishings, and necessary utensils, and that list known to bookkeeping as ‘incidentals.’ I know now that we both vowed silently to dig up our money-making powers of every conceivable sort.

I began immediately to tutor a staleminded youth who needed three more credits for admission to his college. After getting my usual four dollars for two hours the first week, I revolted absolutely and resolved to find a less enervating way of earning my extra money. Forcing facts into a boy who knows that you will compel him to pass his examination, provided he pays enough, simply to preserve your own record as a successful tutor! There is no heavier burden laid upon the pedagogue’s spirit. Thank Jove and the twelve Graces, I threw it off for good and all!

That first year it was not my ingenuity that saved us; it was my wife’s. Within twelve months she earned two hundred and forty-five dollars by reading manuscript. During her first years out of college she had learned how to do such work, and, luckily, was able to pick it up again with the same publishers. At the close of the year all of that money was invested in a single venture — a son. Whatever may have been my regret because that particular money was the only sum at hand just then, it was lost in our great happiness. Meanwhile, I had written enough thrilling love-stories to bring in eighty-four dollars above the cost of stamps. These were published anonymously, as being quite beneath the dignity of my profession.

We had finished our first year free of debt, with thirty dollars left. Our total income, counting that last four dollars for tutoring, had amounted to seventeen hundred and thirty-three dollars. Eighty per cent came as salary from the university, twenty per cent from outside sources. We had been able to buy such household necessities as our friends had failed to include among their wedding-gifts. The less said about our ingenious devices in the matter of clothes the better. At least, we were well and completely happy; no matter then if we were only even up financially and worse off sartorially by a year’s wear.

The second year, we foresaw, was to have novel expenses and likewise many that could not be anticipated. Had we forgotten, our young son would have reminded us at once. That year we followed the same programme of professional and unacademic work, but with greater variations. For instance, I found an opening to teach all summer and so earned an extra four hundred. The love-stories were worth ninety-six dollars that year. Some extension lectures — so called because you do them outside of lecture halls and usually at the end of a fifty-mile journey — these brought in four hundred and twentyone more. Most marvelous of all, some copies of my doctor’s thesis were sold and brought in twenty dollars. Manuscript reading netted a total of a hundred and three dollars, even though my wife had the care of our son added to her household duties of the preceding year. The usual salary increase gave me sixteen hundred dollars from the university, so that our entire income amounted to twenty-six hundred and forty dollars.

That was quite a respectable sum, we thought; and it was, by comparison with what many of our friends were getting. Our house rent had increased a bit; we had cared for our boy, and we had rejuvenated our wardrobes by several additions. With all this we managed to corral a sum of two hundred and twenty-eight dollars for our savings account. To get this favorable balance we had worked constantly. By that I mean, in my own case, every evening of every week-day and every Sunday morning, with the exception of an occasional evening off for a lecture or reception. Our leisure evenings of the first year had disappeared, and so had much of our social life. My university salary, I felt, was less deservedly mine that year, for the constant attention to outside engagements had drawn my strength and interest from the work of my classes. Incidentally, I had given up completely all research work in my special field of investigation. Again, though, we had made the round of months successfully. We were as happy and cheerful as ever, even though nightwork without a stop had made me feel considerably older. If either of us was discouraged at the heavy burden of routine, there was no confessing it to the other.

The third year came on with a rush. My old engagements for extension teaching were open, there were more manuscripts than ever before for my wife, and I was starting work on a textbook that was to be an enduring source of income. Only the love-stories of past years went by the board — like tutoring, I hope, never to rise again. By using every other method named above, and using them more skilfully, we increased our outside income for that third year to the sum of two thousand and fifty-nine dollars. This exceeded our best hopes by a great deal; even though we had kept accounts as usual, the totals were most impressive We were struck with the fact that we had earned more than my university salary through outside service of various sorts. That year my university salary was eighteen hundred dollars, whereas our other income amounted to two thousand and fifty-nine! The question arose in my mind as to my university obligations. For at least nine months of the year my classes and research work deserved all my energy, according to the terms of my contract; yet here I was making my true profession merely an aid to larger returns from other sources. That year was both a success and a source of spiritual disturbance.

Here appears one of the temptations of university life entirely unknown in ordinary commercial affairs. What young business man tops his weekly salary check with a larger one from outside? Probably very few. During three years our income from other channels than my true profession had risen in proportion from twenty per cent of the total to forty per cent, and at last to sixty-four! My teaching and study seemed to me less fruitful than in the other years; yet we had seven hundred dollars more for the savings account — money that seemed mine, in some sense, at the cost of the university. At least, I was in the incongruous situation of prospering because I had neglected my obligations for the sake of selfish ends, meanwhile being promoted as if in reward for good service.

As for the fourth year, there the war and all its changes got in their work. I was unable to resist longer the direct asking of friends that I use my scientific knowledge for the good of our country. The coming of our second child a few months before fall deterred me only a little; then I was off to what seemed my place in a government office and laboratory. My wife, with the heavier burden, stayed on in our new apartment, at last having a maid to help with the two children. We could afford to spend the money from my captain’s pay, for at last we knew exactly what income we should find ready on the first day of every month. The fourth year was so exceptional in many ways that its finances have no place in this story. Uniforms, trips home, illness, and two places of residence instead of one have used up all my pay month by month.

Now, as I look ahead to next fall and a return to the university way of living, I can take stock of my past years with a good deal of understanding. My experience was typical of much that my young colleagues endured during those same years, though few had such financial success. Some added four hundred dollars yearly to their incomes through such extension of summer work as has been described, and a goodly number are still single men waiting to summon courage and cash in suitable amount. Putting it concretely, I was forced out of my true profession into all sorts of odd jobs because I chose to be married and have a family without waiting for a place of security in the academic scale. That my wife’s ability made the family fortunes somewhat better was a matter of good fortune that does not alter the general principles affecting the situation. The fact is that to-day both the young professor and his university suffer immensely by the haphazard system controlling those fateful years immediately after the doctor of philosophy becomes an instructor.

And now, ignoring much of the weariness undergone to reach the close of every twelvemonth free from debt, I feel most regretful over the failure to grow in my true profession through the pressure of that necessary hack-work. My teaching was commonplace instead of vigorous and inspiring; I produced no articles from my masses of material stored up during graduate years; I planned no new courses, outlined no new fields of mental interest. All that was to have been my true business in the university was shelved. Meanwhile, the university had advanced me automatically year by year in salary, and, at length, to my rank of assistant professor; from this point, however, I know well enough that the method of promotion is to be more exacting, more analytical of what I produce. I have had my three years of preliminary tryout with very little regard being given to me. Would that they had been free from financial experimentation, so that I might have shown my ability at once.

Yet I am not among those who feel that our universities should favor their new men with considerably larger salaries as the only remedy needed. Shorter hours and more pay have been the unintelligent outcry of too many uninstructed human beings, with the idea that private welfare means making the other party to the contract give more freely. After all is said in the matter, the university is as great a loser as the man. She gets poor return for her investment, and, worse still, demoralizes the very men who in years to come must be her leaders. Without some supervision they will either dissipate their energies in outside employment or wall limit their scheme of life to the narrow possibilities of present conditions. The failure of the university has come through such methodical, undiscriminating advancement as has been described, through the regular giving of two hundred or a hundred dollars more yearly to the beginner until he has reached his professorial majority. There must be more rapid advancement for the deserving and discharge for the lazy incompetents — in short, we must have intelligent supervision.

Other help for the young professor could well be found in tests of our current sociological theories. Universities might properly go in for experimental housing and for supervision of community living, with its younger men as the beneficiaries. Such paternalism would not be resented; rather it would create a loyalty to an institution such as the profit-sharing workman feels toward his own industry. These are only suggestions as to method. The great principle is that the universities must assume a social responsibility if they are to protect their younger men from self-destruction and themselves from both dry-rot and desertion.

That last word, so ominous when used during war-time, is equally so in present talk regarding the young professor. College and university teachers are deserting our institutions of learning for more profitable commercial employments. Take, for example, the chemist who has proved in war-work his theories regarding the manufacture of artificial rubber, dye-stuffs, or commercial chemicals. He will leave his place as professor of chemistry at three thousand dollars a year when offered a business connection at ten thousand. Many men have already made such changes, and the temptation is still before the others. Not long ago, a wartime acquaintance met me at luncheon. As casually as though ordering a lamb chop this man offered me a five-thousand-dollar place with his manufacturing firm. When I declined, with unchanged manner he said, ‘Well, let me know whenever you get the notion to come along.’

His remark showed that he expected the change to come, sooner or later. Evidently his calculations were based on experience with my kind during these past months of academic disturbance, when literally thousands of scientific students have assisted the best men from our universities in making practical application of their abstract knowledge. The manufacturers have discovered the scholar, and the scholar has been shown new visions of comfortable living.

But in my case my friend was wrong. I am going back. I began teaching from love of the work; I likewise see better things ahead for the university and college teachers of our country. Industry will keep in touch with laboratory theorists for its own advantage, and also will give us profitable summer employment. In this the universities will find cause to bind their men to greater loyalty through better salaries and some supervision of their welfare. Men in the liberal-arts division should share fully in such readjustment, for they are far more dependent upon their university salaries than the men in science. It is fair to assert as a prophecy, not as a warning, that the universities of America must give proper aid to their younger men without delay if they would avoid demoralization of instruction and research. To neglect this need will bring upon them a programme of slow reconstruction by way of training new men and reemploying at attractive salaries such as have deserted to industry. At last outside interests are bidding openly for all, not part, of the time of university teachers. It behooves the university to share with the professor and the business man their keen interest in the outcome.